The daytime talk show became a global phenomenon and a vehicle Springer would use to drag US TV into a surreal and scandalous moral gutter. The format was simple: Trailer-trash Oprah.

Thousands of lower-class Americans would be lured on to live television with promises of star treatment, hotels and 15 minutes of fame.

Jerry Springer would play the role of doctor, counsellor, mediator and reassuring friend.

Viewers would apply, desperately seeking a resolution to personal problems and believe with all their heart that Jerry could help them, unaware they were being viewed as merely another precious commodity from which all value must be violently extracted.

The sheer crudity of parading vulnerable individuals and families – to sell adverts – was eclipsed only by the vulgarity of the eye-watering profits Springer wrung out of every one them.

Profit pursued so ruthlessly that not even the murder of a woman, battered to death by her former partner after the episode they featured in was broadcast in 2000, was enough to get it cancelled.

The only thing that killed Jerry in the end was low ratings. Who then, on God’s green Earth, would wish to emulate such a monstrosity on this side of the Atlantic?

Read More

Ergo, without the spoon-fed, warm diarrhoea of Jeremy Kyle – which exploits the vulnerable to replenish company profits – then critically acclaimed night-time dramas about middle-class people having terrible sex and killing each other would never get made.

Like every other industry – from bookies to off-sales, junk food producers, payday loan sharks, utilities companies – and more recently social media juggernauts such as Twitter and Facebook – TV survives, in part, by farming society’s most fragile people to create ratings-winning, long-running reality shows, because it is a financial imperative.

Behind the scenes, the death of Steven Dymond is likely being discussed in the context of corporate crisis management.

Kyle will be provided with personal security and doesn’t have to work again in his life – if he can keep his wee tyrannosaurus-rex arms away from the slot-machines.

Then, a heartfelt public-relations campaign will roll out and all involved will fall upward to another career-opportunity. When are we getting the multi-million pound TV drama about that?

Joanna Cherry is the closest the SNP have come to ever to producing a rebel (Image: Scotsman / SWNS)

Shame SNP leadership has lost Cherry

If there is one person who definitely doesn’t – and I mean doesn’t – ever want to be become SNP leader it’s Joanna “don’t forget the QC” Cherry.

Consistently impressive in political debate since her election as an MP, she’s been visibly active across many other issues – from the constitutional crisis in Spain to Brexit.

Incidentally, she has also made a name for herself as the closest the SNP will ever get to producing a rebel.

It’s a terrible shame that she absolutely does not harbour a deep-burning, almost profound ambition to supplant her boss, First Minister Sturgeon – whom I believe we are all just calling “Nicola” now? Personally, of all the contenders, Cherry certainly possesses the grit to succeed in politics.

I get the feeling she is quite handy in a political scrap.

She clearly thinks she is too, having picked a fight with transgender activists and her own party within a week.

Aside from the issues themselves, what Cherry is communicating in every direction is that she is an increasingly influential force.

That she wields a bit more clout than your average parliamentarian.

It is therefore truly Scotland’s loss that Joanna Cherry never, ever, wants to be the First Minister.

Rise of broken politics

The Institute for Fiscal Studies released its latest report this week. The utterly unequivocal findings may one day provide our curious descendants with a reliable list of things to avoid when creating a fair and cohesive society.

Notably, there was particular focus on “deaths of despair”. Suicides, overdoses and other acts of self-abuse are increasing as the UK grinds to an economic and political halt.

The fact we are trying to measure the emotional impact of inequality should be commended. Political exclusion was a big theme, too. The report claimed growing numbers of people “feel like” they are not represented in Westminster.

Of course, the reason people feel like that is because it is true.

Until a report can quantify the immaculate fact that inequality arises out of broken politics and provides recommendations on how to deal with it, then we still have a very long way to go.